Best Business Intelligence Tools Of 2024

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Why We Picked MicroStrategy

MicroStrategy is a patchwork quilt of products on the web, desktop and mobile. There’s MicroStrategy Library where you can access published content and Auto Express for dashboarding and bot creation. Anyone with basic data skills can feed information to a bot and gain insights in seconds.

You don’t need a credit card to sign up for the free trial, but you won’t be able to publish content to the server without a paid upgrade. As for choosing which edition to use, there’s the web and the desktop instance. Which one will suit you? Maybe both?

MicroStrategy Workstation is for developers and data analysts and is more robust for manipulating data. It provides administrative control, even when offline, and helps prototype content before it goes live. Combining multiple visualizations on a single page provided me with more context for the same data.

On the other hand, the Workstation version lacks the same level of natural language processing as the web version.

MicroStrategy Web is for delivering content to your clients. Being online, it’s open to seamless upgrades and customization, and identity management and collaboration are built in. If you have a small organization, the web version might suffice, but you might want to consider going for both if you deal with large data volumes.

Metadata mapping was immensely useful to me when designing a bot using MicroStrategy Auto Express. All I needed to do was feed it the data, and it generated a slew of questions I might want to ask.

With a semantic layer, Microstrategy is among the BI tools that work best with large data warehouses. If you’ve just started in business or haven’t got large data volumes yet, you might want to consider a simpler tool.

An oft-repeated sentiment in user reviews was that this motley crew of products — web, desktop and mobile — didn’t always sync. The vendor positions MicroStrategy One as a unified solution that’ll, hopefully, eliminate these annoyances.

On the flip side, quite a few users said it could be clunky for inexperienced users. Also, some reviewers said it slowed on occasion. Most people said the solution was expensive and found its learning curve quite steep.

In summary, MicroStrategy is worth considering, especially if you’re a medium or large-sized company looking for a web reporting tool with a user-friendly interface.

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Pros & Cons

Data Visualization: Users were satisfied with its powerful dashboards and personalization options for self-service analytics.
Functionality: Reviewers praised the platform for delivering on capabilities and scaling with their data needs.
Ease of Use: User reviews appreciated its reusable objects and semantic layer for automating data wrangling and visualization workflows.

Cost: A majority of the users found the platform to be expensive.
Adoption: Most reviews said the platform had a steep learning curve.

Key Features

HyperIntelligence: Learn about departments or employees by hovering over their names. To get ready information, add the HyperIntelligence extension to your Chrome instance and configure it to your MicroStrategy environment.
Auto Express: Shift the heavy lifting to AI bots — have them analyze your dashboards and suggest deep-dive questions, many of which you might not have thought of. Pull data from Amazon Redshift, Azure SQL Database, Databricks, Google BigQuery and Snowflake, among others.
Action Triggers: Update data in Salesforce CRM, trigger email campaigns in Marketo, or approve expenses in Workday from a MicroStrategy dashboard. Triggering workflows from dashboards is available in MicroStrategy One and Auto Express.
Intelligent Cubes Technology: Drive targeted marketing campaigns by digging deep into buyer demographics, purchase histories and engagement levels. Create an Intelligent Cube to store data in memory and reuse it for as many reports as desired.
Metadata Management: Organize data using a handy index that points to where everything is. It also gives contextual names to datasets so everyone uses the same terminology. Metadata management establishes data lineage by narrating its entire journey — where it started, how it was changed and which tasks use it now.
Role-Based Displays: Remember skimming through your course book a day before an important test? You read the important parts while you skipped the rest. If that’s what you feel when decisions are at stake, role-based views are what you need. CEOs can choose high-level overviews, while middle management might want detailed reports.
Free-form Subscriptions: This is a new feature that allows users to view updates as PDF or Excel files without signing in to MicroStrategy. It’s a great functionality for those who are away from their desks and for their teams in the field.

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Pricing

License/Subscription Cost	On-Premise: It includes an upfront fee for the server software installation. Cloud-based: It includes user-based pricing for the web and mobile-based platforms. CPU-based payment models are also available.
Installation/Implementation Cost	On-Premise: Included in the upfront license cost. Cloud-based: Included in the subscription cost.
Customization Cost	Dependent on the functional requirements and specific needs of the organization.
Change Management	Dependent on the current software, data complexity and volume, availability of migration tools and the gaps between the existing system and the new system.
Training Cost	Online training and video tutorials are available free of cost. Enterprises can choose from in-center training, live online lectures, on-demand learning, and private on-site engagements to meet their training requirements. Each day of training costs $700 and most courses are two days in length.
Recurring/Renewal Costs (including maintenance costs)	On-Premise: Includes cost for updates, maintenance, upgrades, and patches. Cloud-based/SaaS: Renewal cost is equivalent to the fees paid monthly or annually. The vendor manages upgrades and add-ons at no extra cost.

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Oracle Analytics Cloud

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^$16

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Why We Picked Oracle Analytics Cloud

Oracle Analytics Cloud is among the vendor’s many data services, including a business intelligence suite and a data intelligence platform. Besides, Oracle offers bespoke solutions for HCM, supply chain and customer experience. What differentiates Oracle Analytics is that extra dash of augmented capabilities.

Embedded BI is where it truly shines, giving you natural language insights with a single click. This feature extends to its mobile app, and it outperforms many leading platforms with natural language queries and podcasts on mobile.

According to our researchers, Oracle Analytics Cloud has fewer out-of-the-box features than its competitors, such as Power BI and Qlik Sense. Plus, licensing becomes complex when combining the database, middleware and analytics applications.

It’s common for large vendors to offer specialized platforms, but the downside is that they can be out of reach of small organizations. But there’s a silver lining. Many vendors offer customized solutions, so we advise reaching out to the vendor for quotes.

Users appreciate its regular updates, but some report initial bugs due to its relative newness. Despite a positive user experience, the learning curve can be steep. Some users found technical support slow and inadequate, as did I. They took two business days to get back to me when I needed assistance with my account.

Oracle Analytics, though a robust platform, is suitable for mid- and large organizations. If you seek a powerful, scalable platform, consider opting for a trial, but be prepared for sticker shock, especially if you’re new to the Oracle ecosystem.

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Pros & Cons

User-Friendly: Citing its interface, about 91% of users agreed that a drag-and-drop UI makes it easy to use.
Machine Learning: Around 86% of users who discussed augmented analytics were impressed with its ML capabilities.
Integrations: Approximately 84% of users who mentioned connectivity said the platform worked well with other systems, especially Oracle products.
Functionality: According to 83% of users who reviewed capabilities, it has all the required features to support data tasks.
Data Visualization: Around 73% of users who mentioned visualization praised the platform for its storytelling features.

Price: About 88% of reviews citing pricing said that it’s too expensive.
Adoption: Approximately 87% of users who discussed onboarding said there’s a significant learning curve.

Key Features

Deployment: Install and run anywhere, including as a hybrid solution. Scale the instance depending on your workload — deploy OCPUs in multiples of two, extending up to 52. Or pause it when idle. Though identity management is available, there is the option to use one’s own SSO provider. Admins can set user, group and role-based permissions.
Connectivity: Make decisions based on data; connect to social media feeds, data lakes and IoT sources. Store and process data at scale, irrespective of its volume, velocity and variety. Get started as soon as you log in with over 40 readymade connectors.
Direct Query: Oracle Analytics Cloud uses live queries and data caching to fetch responses. Each has its downside. Live connections are heavier on the system, and you might have to compromise on data freshness with data caching. A combination of both might be best. Consider live queries for critical KPIs and data caching for less frequent queries.
Data Preparation: Enrich data from the interface — get data quality insights as you work. Remove the grunt work — create reusable flows for transforming data you can test, share and schedule. Add custom calculations or write regular expressions in the dataset editor.
Semantic Data Modeling: Engage business, dev and data teams in meaningful discussions. Give them data views with a presentation layer that simplifies metrics. Hide the physical data structure with a logical one that speaks the business language. Give stakeholders the power to explore data independently.
AI/ML: Boost productivity with embedded machine learning and natural language insights every step of the way. Display quick forecasts, trend lines and clusters from a popup menu with one click. View the basic facts, key drivers and anomalies with the Explain option. Hit the ground running with recommendations on dimensions, measures and attributes to use when you don’t know where to start.
Oracle Analytics Publisher: Generate reports from any dataset or semantic model. Create formatted documents unique to your business, be it shipping labels, checks, letters or PDF forms.
Data Visualizations: Put your best foot forward with suitable charts and graphs that convey your message effectively. Modify them to answer users’ questions better. Choose from over 45 visualization types, or build your own using extensions from its vast library.
Embedded AI On Mobile: Get real-time alerts and intelligent recommendations on mobile. The Oracle Analytics mobile app captures your preferences and location. Upload datasets just like on the desktop or create a workbook from existing data. Powerful searches enable access to your favorite worksheets; add them to your home screen for a quick view. Use voice-enabled searches and listen to the results as a podcast.

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Qlik Sense

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^$30

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Why We Picked Qlik Sense

Qlik Sense focuses on independent data analysis for enterprises with advanced tools that include AI, natural language processing and automation. User reviews praise it for its associative engine, interactive visualizations and sophisticated analytics.

Its dataset-linking functionality gets my vote as the most significant differentiator since it makes data modeling seamless and saves time. In comparison, manually linking tables in Tableau and Power BI feels like a huge task.

It supports fewer features out of the box (69%) compared to Tableau (72%) and Power BI (74%), but this could be intentional. Qlik has ready-to-go modules for analytics, automation and printing, so keeping it lean is a smart vendor move. Users should be aware that additional modules will cost extra, though.

Qlik Sense SaaS is multi-cloud, so unless the admin assigns separate workspaces, your users won’t be able to create personal dashboards — everything is shared otherwise. Some users said the platform slowed when processing large workloads, which is a common issue with many other platforms. Assess your need for speed before committing to a purchase.

If upgrading from QlikView, you’ll need to create new objects initially, as both platforms have different architectures. However, the vendor assists in seamless migration with the Qlik Analytics Modernization program.

Overall, Qlik Sense is an efficient platform that offers many analysis capabilities worth considering. We recommend checking it out if you’re looking for an alternative to Power BI, entrenched in Microsoft technology, or Tableau, with its emphasis on visualization.

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Pros & Cons

Integrations: Approximately 86% of users reviewing data sources were satisfied with its wide connectivity.
Ease of Use: About 84% of users who cited usability praised the platform for self-service BI.
Functionality: Around 80% of the reviews that mentioned features praised it for ETL and data visualization.
Data Visualization: About 66% of the users discussing dashboards were satisfied with its interactive displays that allowed them to dig deep.

Cost: About 87% of users who mentioned pricing found the tool expensive.
Performance: Around 86% of users citing speed said it lagged when processing large and complex datasets.
Training: Approximately 69% of users who discussed adoption said there was a significant learning curve.
Customization: Around 65% of users who mentioned the freedom to design dashboards said the tool offered limited options.

Key Features

AI Integration: Ask and answer questions in natural language and automate processes using OpenAI and H2O.ai. Feed massive datasets to the LLM and watch as it summarizes the insight for you. Move beyond traditional analysis by working with the IBM Watson API for natural language.
Qlik Sense Management Console: Develop apps, manage tasks and connections, and track performance. With QMC, create content and consume data insights.
Reporting Service: Keep partners and clients on the same page by sending reports to everyone involved, even non-Qlik users. Download reports, subscribe to charts and sheets, or automate report delivery with its Reporting Service, available with Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS.
Apps: Create interactive dashboards and visualizations for separate tasks within Qlik Sense. An organization can use hundreds of Qlik Sense apps in its tech stack.
Associative Recommendations: Save time defining how data tables relate with its intelligent suggestions, something Tableau and Power BI lack. Bubbles represent data tables and color-coded rings — green, orange and red — inside them indicate the possibility of links between the tables.

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Pricing

License/Subscription Cost	On-Premise: License fees include an upfront fee to own the software, plus IP for a fixed term, installation, customization and integration costs Enterprise Edition is offered on-premise and is based on a token system Based on a combination of server, user, document and application-based licensing Cloud-Based/SaaS: Based on recurring subscription-based model: $X per user, per month Cost may vary depending on the Qlik Sense Pricing plan selected: Cloud Basic, Cloud Business, Desktop, Enterprise Edition or Personal Edition
Maintenance Cost	On-Premise: Maintenance cost is over and above the upfront fee Cloud-Based/SaaS: Maintenance cost is included in the service fees charged at the time of purchase
Installation/Implementation Cost	On-Premise: Included in the upfront cost/subscription cost Cloud-Based/SaaS: None
Customization Cost	For both on-premise and cloud-based/SaaS, customization costs vary depending on the product and pricing tier chosen, and the level of customization requiredCosts will vary depending on the package selected
Recurring/Renewal Costs	On-Premise: Annual recurring fees to be paid over and above the upfront cost include annual renewal, upgrades and ongoing support Cloud-Based/SaaS: A recurring monthly fee is charged, which typically includes maintenance, monitoring, upgrades, training and support

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Domo

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^$15

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Why We Picked Domo

Domo has everything data teams could wish for — self-service ETL, advanced analytics and data science. Its rich set of connectors makes users happy as they praise its robust integration APIs. Its scripting language is similar to Power BI, and knowing SQL will shorten your team's learning curve. The vendor offers daily refreshes, currently capping them at 48.

On the flip side, the interface seemed a bit clunky to me. Dashboards don’t display in the edit mode by default, which was a tad annoying. The Getting Started documentation is dated and doesn’t match the new interface. I could find my way around with help from user forums.

While the vendor earns praise for releasing frequent updates, quite a few users say some much-needed features lack depth. According to our research, Domo offers only 64% of the required functionality out of the box, which is much less than what Power BI and Tableau provide. It also underperforms in data querying, scoring only 53 in our analysis.

Some reviews mention bugs and that performance can lag when handling anything complex than simple visualizations. The slowness could be due to the multitenant SaaS model that provides shared computing. As for the mobile app, it didn’t work in the offline mode for me. I should mention here that I had opted for the trial version. A proof-of-concept will help you check if the issue persists in the paid edition.

Domo’s pay-as-you-go model is great for estimating usage but be prepared to pay more for workload spikes. According to our research, about 89% of users who reviewed the price found Domo’s consumption model expensive. Small organizations working with a lean team might find it challenging to handle billing.

Here’s what’s great about subscribing to Domo. You can create as many reports and dashboards as required — there’s no limit or additional cost. Plus, Domo allows adding an unlimited number of users. Domo accepts external data models from OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, Hugging Face, Databricks and Jupyter Workspaces.

Despite a competitive market, Domo is an excellent product for organizations seeking data visualization and strong integration. Its flexible pricing model and recent AI updates make it a strong challenger to leading data platforms.

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Pros & Cons

Source Connectivity: About 86% of users citing data integration said they could connect to their preferred sources easily.
Ease of Use: Around 82% of users discussing the interface said options and tabs were straightforward and intuitive.
Data Visualization: About 74% of people who reviewed Domo for graphics appreciated the ease of creating and sharing data stories.
Functionality: Around 73% of users who mentioned features said Domo performed as expected.
Support Services: About 71% of reviews discussing assistance praised the support team for being helpful and responsive.

Speed: About 78% of users discussing speed said the platform lagged sometimes.
Cost: Around 89% of users discussing price termed the platform as expensive.

Key Features

Domo App Studio: Design custom apps for needs Domo might not address out of the box. Build your own functionality without coding knowledge. Create branded visualizations with your trademark colors, logos and fonts. ESPN enhances the fan experience by capturing and analyzing customer data using a Domo Studio app.
Analyzer: Save time spent cleaning data manually. Use a special editor to set up checks for data inputs. Keep tabs on which charts and dataflows use a specific dataset with the lineage option. You can choose the best chart to present your data and annotate it. Use the Beast Mode for complex math.
DomoGPT: Get answers to data queries using AI Chat (currently in beta). Convert text to SQL or calculations and understand your data using text summaries. Use Domo.AI in a safe, governed space.
Personalized Data Permissions: Create custom data views for your users and hide sensitive data. Your regional managers get exclusive views specific to their roles, while senior management can switch between full and filtered views.
Domo Mobile: View cards and text summaries on the mobile app. Cards fit within the small screen, giving a great user experience. Domo Buzz allows sharing files to WhatsApp, Gmail, QuickShare and Google Drive. You can even save a screenshot to your phone gallery.
Alerts: Stay informed about KPIs that matter to you. Set new alerts and share them with selected users or subscribe to existing ones. Choose where you want to receive the notifications — email, mobile app or SMS.

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Power BI

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^$10

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Why We Picked Power BI

Our researchers ranked products on a whole bunch of features. They include data management, querying and visualization, advanced and embedded analytics, mobile BI, and IoT and location analytics.

In our rankings, Power BI scores 87 for connectivity, leaving behind Tableau, Oracle Analytics and Dundas BI. Robust Microsoft technology is one reason, for sure. Besides, intelligent techniques like DirectQuery and easy data modeling make it popular among users.

In product reviews, some users mentioned a lag when sharing reports from the desktop to the cloud. For me, the platform was a tad slow to start, but otherwise, it stayed performant for my average-sized dataset.

When dealing with sales data, total sales, the top-performing products, seasonality and period trends are common queries. Creating a sales KPI report in Power BI was an excellent way for me to answer them. My CSV files included sales, calendar, products and store data.

Connecting to sources is straightforward with Get Data on the home screen and toolbar. Once I had pulled in the data, I clicked on Transform Data and opened the Power Query editor. It automatically detects the data type for strings and numbers but can get confused with dates and currency, which it marks as text. It involved some manual wrangling, but I had it sorted in no time. Read my article on KPI Reports to learn how I did it.

But I wouldn’t call it a deal-breaker as it’s not a tedious task. I had the same experience with Qlik Sense, but Tableau was way better as it recognizes seven data types — string, number, date, date and time, boolean, geographic and cluster values.

Tracking sales over periods required a greater level of detail, so I added new columns to the calendar data — start of month and start of week. Column statistics were immensely helpful in identifying unique, distinct and null values and correcting incomplete records. Clicking on the number of products selling at a particular price allowed me to see which toys sold at that price.

Creating a relational data model by defining primary keys is a manual process and seems dated once you’ve used Qlik Sense. Adding calculated measures is where DAX shows its magic. For data workers well-versed with SQL, DAX is a ready-to-go tool they’ll be glad to have in their corner.

Creating visualizations wasn’t as intuitive as Tableau as it involved drag-and-drop onto the canvas, and frankly, I felt like I was flying blind. I didn’t feel that way with Tableau, and it’s slicker.

Power BI offers a paintbrush tool that lets you define the layout, the card arrangement and the maximum number of cards. You can define the canvas settings, background and headers and determine the filter pane settings. It took me longer to create a dashboard from scratch than it took in Tableau.

Some users found the pricing structure too complex. While using Azure data in Power BI for basic queries is free, costs can add up when you go for text and sentiment analysis. With Microsoft Fabric, the pricing complexity is set to rise. Though Power BI is available separately too, you’ll need to rely on Fabric to manage users, licenses and other administrative tasks.

About 31% of the users mentioning cost complained about onboarding difficulties, possibly because DAX introduces the complexity of learning syntax. It can daunt non-technical users initially, but guided formulas can make the task easier. That said, I agree with the majority of user reviews that training will speed up onboarding and help your team maximize the investment.

Overall, Power BI has many powerful features and will give you value for your money. If you’re not a Microsoft user yet, it’s worth checking out for the baked-in vendor technologies like Azure and SSAS. If you are an MS user, Power BI might be a no-brainer, though be prepared to shell out a little extra for advanced functionality and additional modules.

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Pros & Cons

Integrations: Around 95% of users who mentioned data sources said they were satisfied with its flexibility in connecting to sources.
Data Visualization: About 93% of the users who discussed visual analysis said they relied on it for daily reporting.
Functionality: Over 75% of the users reviewing features said they were impressed with its live queries, DAX calculations and data modeling.
Ease of Use: Approximately 72% of the users who mentioned its UI said it was straightforward to use.

Speed: About 95% of recent reviews citing performance said the platform lagged when dealing with large data volumes.
Adoption: Around 81.5% of the reviewers mentioning adoption said the learning curve was steep.
Cost: Approximately 71% of users discussing pricing complained about the platform being expensive.

Key Features

Dataflows: Save time with reusable workflows that lock the logic in. While shared datasets are open to interpretation, dataflows will take your users in one direction only, ensuring consistent results. It’s like a written recipe, just follow the steps to get the taste right.
Analyze in Excel: Focus on the end game. Give your teams the freedom to analyze their data in Excel and move the results back to Power BI.
DAX: Empower your people to go beyond raw data. Derive calculated columns and measures with Data Analysis Expressions. Watch them update as you apply filters and slicers and interact with data in other ways.
Data Alerts: Act in time to keep things running smoothly. Stay informed of changes with alerts. Subscribe to receive notifications via email or the Power BI notification center (available only with Power BI Service). Among visualizations, KPI cards, cards and gauges have the alert option.
Data Refreshes: Stay ahead of trends with the latest insight. Update data on demand in Power BI or schedule refreshes with Power Automate. Power BI Pro and Premium allow up to eight and 48 refreshes daily, respectively.
Key Influencers Visual: Decide the next steps by spotting the factors affecting a critical metric. As a transporter, does only the terrain impact how consistently your trucks deliver, or is the average age of the fleet vehicles also a factor?
Decomposition Tree: Identify which product category or region contributed most to sales increase or decrease. For instance, you can analyze sales trends by channel with the decomposition tree.

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Pricing

License/Subscription Cost	Based on the number of users for Power BI Pro and capacity-based pricing for Power BI Premium
Maintenance Cost	Included in the subscription cost
Installation/Implementation Cost	Included in the subscription cost. Additional charges may apply for data migration during implementation of Power BI, maintaining on-premise data sources and building dashboards and reports
Customization Cost	Dependent on functional requirements and specific needs of the organization
Data Migration Cost/Change Management/Upfront Switching Cost	Dependent on your current software, amount of data to be migrated, availability of migration tools, complexity of data and gaps between the existing system and the new system.
Recurring/Renewal Costs	Renewal cost is included in the fees paid monthly or annually

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SAP Analytics Cloud

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^$36

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Why We Picked SAP Analytics Cloud

SAP Analytics Cloud is a powerful data visualization tool that helps users explore data in an easy-to-understand format and discover metrics that help them make informed decisions.

Many users who reviewed visualization said that the platform has rich graphics libraries and a range of templates for story presentation of business metrics. Citing its aesthetic design, a majority of users said that the solution’s interface is intuitive for programmers and non-technical users alike. Mentioning its strong predictive and augmented analysis capabilities, a lot of users said that the platform is a strong planning tool and helps them gain business insights easily. Many users said that the tool works well on a plethora of devices, including mobile, and is accessible on multiple browsers, though some users said that its offline mode capabilities are limited. Most of the users who reviewed data integrations said that the tool handles large amounts of data seamlessly, though quite a few users said its compatibility with live connection data sources is limited to other SAP products. Reviewing functionality, a majority of users said that the tool is versatile and scalable to ensure a great end-to-end user experience, though some said that it needs more features, such as improved live data analytics.

The solution does have its limitations, though. Around 85% of users who reviewed its performance said that it struggles at the enterprise level, though quite a few users said that it performs exceedingly well within the SAP ecosystem. A majority of the users who mentioned reporting said that the solution lacks automatic report distribution and broadcasting capabilities, though some said that it has excellent analytical and data-oriented report creation. Many users who discussed data management complained that the process for updating an existing data model needs a lot of rework, and that the solution needs more versatile modeling features.

Overall, SAP Analytics Cloud is a planning tool with strong BI capabilities that brings the power of cloud computing to self-service data analysis for gaining actionable insights into business metrics.

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Pros & Cons

Data Visualization: Approximately 91% of users who reviewed visualization said that they can customize dashboards effortlessly with the solution’s wide range of templates and graphics libraries.
Ease of Use: Citing the platform’s modern and intuitive interface, around 89% of users said that the platform makes it easy to develop stories without technical knowledge thanks to Smart Discovery.
Data Analysis: Mentioning its forecasting and predictive analysis capabilities, approximately 87% of users said that the solution enables collaborative enterprise planning via statistical and predictive analysis.
Web and Mobile Accessibility: Discussing its easy accessibility on multiple browsers, around 72% users said that the platform works well on a wide range of devices.
Data Connectivity: Approximately 70% of the users who mentioned integration said that the tool, with strong live data connections, integrates well with other applications and data sources.
Functionality: Around 55% of the users who discussed features said that the tool is scalable and quite versatile, with frequent updates.

Performance: Approximately 85% of users who reviewed performance said that some features do not work well at the enterprise level.
Reporting: Around 58% of users who mentioned reporting said that report creation with the tool is complicated and needs IT support.
Data Management: Approximately 52% of users who discussed data preparation said that the platform needs more ubiquitous data modeling capabilities.

Key Features

Data Preparation: Alerts as to possible errors and automatically cleans data through machine learning technology to enhance data for deeper insights. Offers context-based suggestions for better data preparation and data visualizations through Smart Transformations.
Chat With Data: Type questions into the Search to Insight bar in natural language to instantly create visualizations — no syntax mastery necessary. Analyze data easily, similar to using a search engine.
Instant Data Visualization: See the full picture in seconds; the solution generates interactive charts and graphs automatically upon query.
Predictive Forecasting: Generates prediction models that learn from historical data to automatically detect risks and predict what is likely to happen in the future.
What-If Analysis: Create what-if simulations through the power of self-service machine learning. Plan for the next steps by fine-tuning prediction scenarios based on confidence levels.
Highlight KPIs: Answer the “why” and “what” questions through augmented analytics. Identify the top contributors to business performance — the people, products and processes that contribute to the overall story.
Analyze Anomalies: Take corrective action aided by Smart Discovery, which automatically points out outlying data.
Hybrid Analytics: Protect technology investments by continuing to manage on-premise systems and existing data infrastructure, while simultaneously moving towards the future by leveraging the cloud. Supports a wide range of data connections, ensuring import and access to data from any source to maintain a 360-degree view of the business.
Partners: Over 100 partners offer upwards of 430 analytical extensions in the SAP App Center that provide additional value and industry specific applications to the platform.
Built-In Collaboration: Create discussions, assign tasks and deadlines and comment on data points. Share information and interact with each other continuously on screen.
Mobile App: Stay connected to the Cloud via a responsive, interactive iOS app.

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Tableau

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^$15

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Why We Picked Tableau

Tableau Desktop is a BI solution for data visualization, dashboarding and location analysis. In online reviews, users said they found its drag-and-drop charting a boon for creating charts and maps. Regarding customization, many users praised the platform for its various labeling and design options.

I recently tried the Tableau Desktop 2024.1.3 version. The trial is only for 14 days and is enough for a sneak peek into Tableau’s dashboarding and data storytelling capabilities. For more straightforward use cases, Tableau is incredibly user-friendly and fast. Creating a new sheet gives you a canvas to create a visualization. Once you have the required sheets, combining them into a dashboard view is straightforward — select and add.

My dataset included healthcare data, including details of patients, their hospital visits and insurance payer details. One use case was to find the total claim settlement amount. I dragged the Total Claims Cost and Payer fields to the column and row shelves, and Tableau gave me a bar graph. The toolbar had single-click options for sorting data from increasing to decreasing values or the other way around.

To view the number of encounters by payer, I dragged the Payer field to the row shelf and used the SUM(ROW_COUNT()) function on the column shelf. The chart popped up with more visualization and layout options.

I wanted an interactive filter to view the average claim cost by birthdate. I dragged the Birthdate field to the Filters shelf and right-clicked on it to set the end date as October 22, 1961. Selecting Show Filter added a slider conveniently to the right of my visualization. I could see the data for people born before October 22, 1961, and if required, I could change the end date.

Another use case would be viewing the data by the type of hospital visits — how many people were inpatients, outpatients or those who needed emergency care. I dragged and dropped the Total Claims Cost and Payer fields into columns and rows, respectively. Similarly, I dropped Encounterclass into the Filters shelf and clicked on Show Filter to enable a checkbox on the screen. It had all the categories of visits, giving users the option to select the desired views.

One-fourth of the users discussing adoption said there was a steep learning curve. Tableau relies on Python and R scripts for statistics in its visualizations. It's where the named licenses can prove to be a blessing, as you can opt to train upcoming Creators and Explorers. We recommend factoring in training if you want to hit the ground running.

Some reviewers felt discounted packages for business editions should be available, similar to the free student licenses. At $70 per user, the Creator license can seem costly when compared to Power BI ($9.99 per user) and Qlik Sense ($30 per user).

Here's the good news, though. Its built-in user management acts as a permissions layer for your organization - users can only access the relevant content. Plus, an organization will have very few Creators and a greater number of Viewers and Explorers, and the license fee reduces from Creator to Explorer to Viewer.

We recommend opting for a wise license combination to get the most out of the product.

On the upside, the vendor constantly releases new features, the latest one being Einstein CoPilot in beta.

Overall, Tableau is a competitive BI solution, but if the pricing seems inflexible, quite a few other solutions offer live insights and advanced analytics out of the box.

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Pros & Cons

Data Visualization: Almost 98% of users who reviewed its visual capabilities praised the platform for its dashboards and the freedom to play around with data and modify charts as desired.
User-Friendly: According to 93% of users who mentioned ease of use, it makes data accessible with its easy user actions and handy tooltips.
Data Connectivity: About 92% of users who discussed data sourcing praised its ability to pull data from disparate systems.

Pricing: Around 90% of the users citing cost found it expensive.
Speed: About 71% of the users who discussed performance found it slow when processing large data volumes.
Onboarding Woes: Approximately 67% of the users who reviewed the platform's adoption said there was a steep learning curve.

Key Features

Connectors: Combine data from various sources by choosing from a wide range of connectors — no need to spend on expensive third-party data integration tools. Tableau Bridge connects private networks to live data sources via Tableau Cloud.
AI: Tableau now offers AI capabilities thanks to Einstein Analytics.
- Tableau Pulse: Explore data independently and ask questions with AI analytics. Tableau Pulse is available with Tableau Cloud and Embedded Analytics.
- Explain Data: Understand the displayed insights with natural language explanations of data points.
- Einstein CoPilot (Beta): Close the gap in understanding data with AI insights. Discover hidden trends by asking follow-up questions without losing context, thanks to generative AI. Einstein CoPilot is available with a Tableau Cloud subscription.
Tableau Prep: Clean and transform data of all types, including survey results, feedback data and social media posts. Shape and combine it with Tableau Prep, which is available with the paid edition only.
Data Stories: Convey your message with compelling narratives to get stakeholder buy-in. Drag and drop sheets onto the storyboard to show the growth, decline or stability of critical metrics.
Animations: Explain how data changes over time with animated charts and customize them to include graphics, labels and colors.
Filtering: Focus on the data that matters; it’s as easy as dragging and dropping desired fields to the Filter shelf. Specify a value range, set a condition or choose the top values to display.
User-Based Licenses: Explore cost-effective license combinations that work for your team.
- Creators can build dashboards, permissions, and governance rules, and establish connections to new sources. They’re content authors who transform and analyze data. This license is available at $70 per user monthly, billed annually. However, they can’t control the Tableau Server or Desktop environment.
- Explorer licenses are suitable for line-of-business users whose role requires independent data exploration. They can author content but within a governed ecosystem. Each Explorer license costs $42 monthly, billed annually. They can’t connect to new sources, modify data, or use the Tableau desktop or custom SQL.
- Viewers can interact with data, apply filters and follow pre-decided workflows. This license is available for $15 per user monthly, billed annually. Viewers have limited rights and can’t create and edit visualizations and the underlying data.

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Spotfire

Start Price

^$0.99

Monthly, Quote-based

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Why We Picked Spotfire

In online reviews, Spotfire emerges as a user-friendly big data platform. Most users found data exploration easy with a drag-and-drop interface. Some users said the UI was dated, though, and said it could use a revamp. Most users praised its interactive visualizations and dashboards, saying they helped them interpret data better. But, a few said they would love to have more visuals to choose from.

A user mentioned they did the calculations in Excel and imported them into Spotfire for visualization. It's a common scenario when a steep learning curve slows down adoption, and teams fall back on Excel. Most users said Spotfire takes time to learn. You might have to opt for a balance of multiple platforms to balance your departmental and enterprise needs.

Spotfire surpasses Excel in data management, especially data prep. Customizable visualizations and custom Mods give you enough freedom to work within the platform.

Though 72% of reviewers were happy with the integrations, Spotfire lacks some standard connectors, such as for Apache Kafka, forcing users to rely on workarounds.

A majority of users found its pricing structure complex, especially as users increased. In such cases, organizations often tend to opt for a cheaper alternative for less advanced use cases while using the pricier platform for the critical ones. We advise doing a deep dive into the vendor's pricing plans to avoid making your tech stack top-heavy.

Ultimately, Spotfire's appeal lies in its balance. It's visually captivating and user-friendly for casual users while offering enough depth for seasoned analysts. However, its pricing and learning curve might deter organizations on a tight budget.

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Pros & Cons

Data Visualization: About 86% of reviewers were satisfied with the available options when designing dashboards.
Support: Around 74% of users praised vendor support for their timely response and helpful attitude.
Integration: Almost 72% of users were satisfied that it integrates with their preferred systems.
Friendly Interface: Around 68% of reviewers said the platform was easy to use.
Functionality: About 64% of users said it had a rich feature set.

Cost: Around 96% of the user reviews said it the price was high and licensing complex.
Adoption: 90% of reviewers said there was a significant learning curve and users would need specialized knowledge of data science and statistics.

Key Features

Spotfire Actions: Decide what to do with and act instantly — no need to switch to your procurement application to pause new orders. This powerful feature allows you to run scripts within analytics workflows. You can also trigger actions in your external system through visualization. Spotfire can set up over 200 commercial connections and has 1800 community connectors.
Mods: Build reusable workflows and visualization components, much like apps in Power BI and Qlik Sense. They allow your users to tailor their analytical processes so they don’t have to start from scratch every time. Based on code, they run in a sandbox with limited access to system resources for security. Users can share them through the Spotfire library. Mods improve efficiency and collaboration.
Batch Edits: Make similar changes to multiple files in one go. Write custom scripts to call the Spotfire API that’ll make changes to the files. Update the IronPython version to the latest one or embed the Spotfire JQueryUI library instead of its references.
Recurring Jobs: Simplify event scheduling to better manage your time and tasks. Improve efficiency and deliver reports at the same time on the same day of the week or month. The latest Spotfire version allows you to set recurring automation jobs to occur every X hours, days, weeks or months.
Web Player REST API: Share insight with clients and partners without them needing to sign up for a paid Spotfire account. Engage them via data visualizations on the web browser, thanks to Spotfire Web Player. Update analyses on the web with real-time data in the latest Spotfire version.
Roles: Invest wisely — opt for licenses that align with user roles. Choose Spotfire Analyst for data analysts, scientists and power users who need deep-dive analysis. Get the Business Author license for enterprise users, analysts and power users to create and consume insights without deep expertise. Choose consumer licenses for users who’ll interact with and consume data. They include the C-suite and non-technical users within the organization.
Information Designer: Prepare fully governed data sources for business users in a dedicated wizard. Set up their preferred data sources and define in advance how Spotfire will query and import data into storage. Specify which columns to load and which filters, joins and aggregations to apply.
Audio and Image Processing: Add user feedback from customer calls and videos. Interpret public sentiment about your product by analyzing social media pictures and videos. Spotfire enables writing code to extract text from audio and image files. You can then import the data into the platform for analysis.
IoT Analytics: Gain insight at lightning speed; build microservices and deploy them at the edge. With Spotfire, you can add IoT data to your regular data for the complete picture.

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SAS Visual Analytics

Start Price

^$8,000

Monthly

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Why We Picked SAS Visual Analytics

SAS Analytics is a versatile business intelligence and analytics tool that empowers users to explore and understand data through interactive data visualizations. Many users who reviewed data analysis said that, coupled with the power of predictive analytics, the platform offers a plethora of graphics options — charts, graphs and dashboards — with deep-dive capabilities, such as filtering, to zero in on pertinent business data. Many users who reviewed functionality and data preparation said that, possibly because of its capable ETL engine and in-memory architecture, data processing speed is very high and reports load faster. A majority of users who reviewed data connectivity said that the tool is efficient in pulling data from multiple sources for data modeling and analysis.

On the flip side, quite a few users who reviewed functionality said that the platform’s integration with Python and R is still in the development stage and this limits its functional scope. Some users who discussed user-friendliness said that the processes are not the most intuitive — errors and warnings in logs are misleading, and new users may find adoption difficult. Though the industry scope of user tutorials is limited, a majority of users said that the steep learning curve of the platform is sufficiently addressed by training. For many users, its cost-prohibitive licensing plans caused them to not consider it their first choice when it came to purchasing a BI solution.

Overall, SAS Visual Analytics is a versatile tool with fast data processing capabilities and strong visualizations to generate reports for insightful data analysis.

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Pros & Cons

Data Analysis: Around 81% of users who reviewed its data analysis capabilities said that the tool offers out-of-the-box advanced analytics to identify patterns and relationships in business data.
Functionality: Citing its powerful in-memory technology, approximately 62% of users who reviewed functionality said that the solution provides a single, compact interface for data exploration and modeling for faster analytic computations.
Data Visualization: Around 60% of users who reviewed data visualization said that they can perform exploratory data analysis with a multitude of graphics options, such as bubble charts, line charts, dual axis charts.
Ease of Use: Approximately 54% of users who mentioned ease of using the software said that it is easy to generate reports with some basic SQL knowledge.

Cost: Around 80% of users who discussed the platform’s cost said that they find the pricing to be cost-prohibitive.

Key Features

Ad Hoc Reporting and Analysis: Assemble reports from data creatively in real time as opposed to relying on a predesigned template. Run queries and perform analysis on data on demand without knowing code.
Predictive Analysis: Make predictions about future conditions based on historical data through data mining, machine learning and predictive modeling.
Mobile Apps: Leverage the power of native apps on iOS, Android and Microsoft devices, with an optimized mobile interface. Interact with visualizations on the go, view previous reports, leave comments, capture screenshots and set mobile notifications.
Interactive Discovery: Identify outliers, clusters, relationships, trends, etc. by exploring data in a natural query-based way rather than through coding.
Location Analytics: Lasso data points on a map through OpenStreetmap or Esri ArcGIS to select them for analysis and then enrich demographic data through point clustering, map pins, custom polygons and more.
Trend Indicators: Identify which types of data to observe through built-in trend indicators that attempt to predict future movement of data points based on historical trends.
Visualizations: Get desired insights from data and easily discover patterns through a range of visualization options, such as bar graphs, pie charts, donut graphics, line graphs, scattergrams, heat maps, bubble maps, dot maps, needle graphics, numeric series, schedule charts, vectors, key value infographics and more.
Scheduled Reporting: Programmable to send reports at scheduled intervals or based on triggered events to ensure they are delivered regularly.
Customizable Dashboard: Access only relevant tools, visualizations and data through the customizable dashboard interface. Engage with data as well as collaborate with others on data visualizations, irrespective of technical skill levels.
Embedded BI: Embed the system into web applications or other software solutions for a seamless interface and direct data draw. Also, embed individual reports and dashboards using SAS SDK.

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Pricing

License/Subscription Cost	Price is based on server and user capacity. It includes license and hosting infrastructure cost 150, 300 and 600 GB storage is provided by the SaaS Now environment. The price of additional storage is $0.50 per GB per month
Maintenance Cost	On-Premise: An additional cost over and above the upfront cost has to be paid for ongoing support and maintenance Cloud-based/SaaS: Upgrades and add-ons are managed directly in the cloud at no extra cost
Installation/Implementation Cost	On-Premise: Typically charged in addition to the license cost Cloud-based/SaaS: Included in the subscription cost
Customization Cost	Will vary depending on the functional requirements such as configurable dashboards, dashboard and operational reporting needs, type of data elements required for tracking, complexity of workflows, forms to collect additional data, UI changes, etc
Data Migration Cost/Change Management/Upfront Switching Cost	Dependent on your current software, amount of data to be migrated, availability of migration tools, complexity of data and gaps between the existing system and the new system
Training Cost	Provides free e-learning and online demos
Recurring/Renewal Costs	On-Premise: Includes cost for updates, maintenance, upgrades, and patches Cloud-based/SaaS: Renewal cost is equivalent to the fees paid monthly or annually

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Cognos Analytics

Start Price

^$50

Babelfish is designed to automate an organization’s sales and marketing intelligence. It draws data from marketing campaigns, CRMs and commerce records to give users insight into customer behavior and demographics. Its NLP-based search function lets users query data in simple language, which it translates into a data query, offering ad-hoc analytics. It uses machine learning to learn behavior’s patterns and needs the more they use it, providing recommendations and guidance for better, faster decision-making.This product isn’t to be confused with the translation program acquired by Bing in 2012.

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Why We Picked Cognos Analytics

IBM Cognos Analytics is an excellent BI tool and rates very highly with users on all major counts. Users are unanimous in their praise of its data management and data analysis capabilities to provide a single source of truth. Having ventured into AI-powered tools with the 11.1.3 version in 2018, IBM is making bold strides to incorporate augmented intelligence into the platform. IBM has astutely combined this solution with the capabilities of one of its other offerings, Watson Analytics, for natural language processing - a game-changer for empowering non-technical users to create a vast range of dashboards. With AI-enabled exploration, users can review key drivers of metrics and identify gaps in data, though some users feel that more tools are needed for content store exploration through its relational database. It also rates excellently with users for its data integration and ad-hoc reporting capabilities, efficient metadata management and extensive data modeling features.

Several strong features of this platform, as noted by reviewers, include Jupyter notebooks, regular updates to the platform and enhancements to data modules, though when it comes to integrating with Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) data sources and IBM Planning Analytics in particular, it comes up short. Version 11 of the platform comes with over-the-top installs for upgrades, which reduces time to set up; though some users feel that integrations built with the current SDK solution can be tedious to implement and maintain. Being part of the IBM software suite, it connects seamlessly to other IBM products under the same umbrella. However, integration with MS-Sharepoint is not supported; this can be managed with workarounds, but only for on-premise setups, not cloud-based deployments. The platform has a rich reporting repertoire with report burst capabilities, pivots and Cognos Event Studio for event-driven reports. However, many users feel that Report Studio should provide the write back capability, which is crucial for business. As for the cost, a majority of users feel that its licensing models are restrictive, especially when compared to other BI solutions; though the vendor seems to address pricing and ease of use with version 11.1.3.

In summary, Cognos Analytics is among the best BI solutions in the market today and IBM, with its ear to the ground, is delivering enhanced data analysis and reporting capabilities at scale.

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Pros & Cons

Data Analysis and Visualization: All users who mention data analysis and presentation unanimously agree that this solution covers the full spectrum of BI analytics capabilities.
Data management: All users who mention data preparation praise its data integrations and effective metadata management, which ensure data consistency and accuracy across multiple reporting systems.
Functionality: Of users who mentioned this platform’s features, around 90% were satisfied with regular updates and enhancements which allow them to create faster, more responsive dashboards.
Reporting: Around 89% of users who mention reporting are satisfied, appreciating its ad-hoc reporting and report-sharing capabilities.
Setup: Excellent vendor support coupled with the ease of establishing data connectivity with data sources make installation of this solution a breeze, as approximately 87% of users have mentioned.

Cost: Around 87% of users who mention cost feel that its licensing model is expensive when compared to other BI solutions.
Training: Approximately 45% of users who reviewed training say that the learning curve can be quite steep and though self-service training is available, they would prefer a formal learning program.

Key Features

Components: Boost the feature set of the core platform with components that enhance data modeling, visualization and analytics capabilities.
Powerful Reporting: Create detailed charts, graphs, maps, voiceovers and repeat functions with the robust, professional reporting suite. Simplify reporting for non-technical users with express mode.
Web-based Interface: Access the platform on any hardware via the web.
Natural Language-powered AI: Interrogate data and receive natural, consistent responses with a built-in AI, powered by NLP.
Automated Modeling: Verify and combine data via automated modeling, and assess relationships between separate data points.

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Pricing

License/Subscription Cost	Dependent on the type of license – workgroup, standard or enterprise (refer pricing section for more details)
Maintenance Cost	Subscription & Support costs are based on a percentage of the license cost (25% of initial license cost) Software Accelerated Value Programs are an incremental charge calculated on a per-case basis, dependent on the specific service that the customer requires. Customers can't purchase Software Accelerated Value Programs without paying standard Subscription & Support cost
Installation/Implementation Cost	Included in license/subscription cost
Customization Cost	Will vary depending on the functional requirements such as configurable dashboards, complexity of workflows, forms to collect additional data, UI changes, etc.
Data Migration Cost/Change Management/Upfront Switching Cost	Dependent on your current software, amount of data to be migrated, availability of migration tools, complexity of data and gaps between the existing system and the new system.
Training Cost	Self-service support is available online Native language support consists of live support and unlimited access for all certified IT technical staff within an organization
Recurring/Renewal Costs	Renewal fee includes license cost and maintenance fee for the new or next year

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Price Guide

See the Price/User for the top business intelligence tools… plus the most important considerations and questions to ask when shopping.

Buyer's Guide

Business Intelligence Tools Are All About Discovering Actionable Insights

By Ritinder Kaur, Senior Technical Content Writer at SelectHub

BI Tools Buyer's Guide

Business intelligence (BI) tools help you earn revenue and grow your business by giving you a clear picture of your enterprise. With market performance and operational insight, reports are the mainstay of your business strategy and direction.

Whether seeking a BI tool for the first time or upgrading, deciding upon one business intelligence software is challenging, especially with many free and open-source platforms. And you can’t afford to miss out on an excellent product.

We’re here to help with tips on the best deployment modes, basic and advanced features, current trends and the best BI software in the market.

Executive Summary

BI software helps boost your bottom line by utilizing market insight and business metrics.
Data visualization, reporting, embeddability, geospatial analysis and mobile insight are must-have BI features.
Current business intelligence trends include data literacy, governance and SaaS solutions.
Creating a requirements checklist is an essential first step in a business intelligence software search.
Prepare beforehand for vendor discussions by making a list of questions to ask them.

What This Guide Covers:

What Are Business Intelligence Tools?
Deployment Methods
Primary Benefits
Implementation Goals
Basic Features & Functionality
Advanced Features & Functionality
Current & Upcoming Trends
Cost & Pricing Considerations
Questions To Ask Yourself
Questions To Ask Vendors
Next Steps
Product Comparisons
Additional Resources

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What Are Business Intelligence Tools?

BI tools are software applications that support organizations by providing information on internal operations and client transactions. This information — business intelligence — is crucial for reporting and business analytics.

Business intelligence platforms aren’t mere spreadsheet tools. They’re sophisticated big data and embedded analytics tools too. The explosion in data volumes drives vendors to scale their offerings, which is why you see such a wide variety of BI software.

Dundas BI

Viewing metrics by dragging a database table to the dashboard in Dundas BI. Source

Where Do You Start?

Should you ask for a BI tool, or will a data analytics solution be equally good? Data analytics is one technique among many used for business intelligence and includes real-time data monitoring, dashboarding, reporting and benchmarking.

Additionally, it includes performance management and data mining.

BI tools can be

BI software can be open-source, free and paid, complicating your search.

Contrary to common perception, free and open-source tools aren’t always lightweight. Many such systems are the mainstay of companies, many of which are considerably-sized businesses.

BI platforms serve industry verticals like retail analytics, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare.

If this is you, narrowing your search might be easier, but it’s just the start.

A lot depends on your company’s IT infrastructure — are you in the cloud, on-premise, or would you instead work with a hybrid model?

Deployment Methods

We break down the pros and cons of each.

Business Intelligence Deployment Methods

On-Premise

Installed directly onto hardware your business owns and maintains, on-premise deployment offers several advantages.

Benefits

Get Uninterrupted Service: On-premise systems don’t rely on the Internet, so connectivity issues won’t affect your business.
Keep Data Secure: Your company’s sensitive information stays onsite, with complete control over security and activity tracking.
Maintain Independently: You have full autonomy over system maintenance, upgrades and fixes. You can decide on downtime schedules and add storage at will.
Pay Once: Deploying the best business intelligence software on-premise costs you once but gets you a perpetual license. It can be a more attractive option than a recurring service subscription that might get costlier over time.

But there’s downsides too.

Limitations

Complex Implementation: Deploying on-premise is time-consuming. Integrating the business intelligence platform and training employees can take days, even months.
IT Resources Necessary: You’ll need technical staff to maintain and fix your systems and hardware, plus physical storage for the machines.
Higher Cost of Entry: Besides the license, paying for hardware and infrastructure is money in the hole, a significant investment before seeing returns.
Hard To Scale: Scaling resources every time your business grows is complicated, time-consuming and expensive.

Cloud-Based

Cloud BI solutions are infrastructure-agnostic and cost-effective and can be self-hosted or served to you via the Internet as SaaS (software-as-a-service).

Benefits

Deploy Painlessly: What used to take months takes days, sometimes hours, and updates are faster.
Scale Flexibly: Most cloud-based business intelligence solutions let you add or remove features, including storage, at an extra charge that’s minimal enough not to burn a hole in your pocket.
Gain Insight Anytime: You can access cloud data anytime, anywhere. Team collaboration becomes easy with shareable links.
Get Lower Cost of Entry: Cloud-based systems offer monthly and annual subscriptions, allowing smaller businesses to adopt BI without a massive capital investment.
Get Software-As-A-Service: Paying to use vendor-hosted software services frees you from maintenance, upgrades and fixes.

SAS Visual Analytics Security

Conditional grants in SAS Visual Analytics restrict access to users by role. Source

But, consider the cons of cloud platforms before deciding.

Limitations

Security: Many enterprises avoid trusting the cloud with sensitive financial information, including trade secrets.
Connectivity Issues: Accessing your data through the internet is cool, but you can’t control it. The cloud isn’t perfect, and access and connectivity issues can cause performance lag.
Costs Add Up: Monthly payments seem lower, but costs can stack when buying additional licenses and modules.
Reliance on a Third Party: Access to company information depends on third-party servers, and businesses can suffer if they go down.

Hybrid

According to Cisco’s 2022 Global Hybrid Cloud Trends Report, 82% of IT leaders confirmed adopting a hybrid cloud setup. It’s a significant increase, considering that more than 60% of companies used it in 2021, while 30% were in the consideration stage.

A hybrid cloud is a loosely coupled setup of private and public cloud and on-premise deployments, forming a flexible computing system.

It allows deploying and running your applications across on-premise and cloud platforms without worrying about compatibility.

Benefits

Gain Flexibility: A hybrid model combines the scalability and versatility of a public cloud with the control of a private setup. It seamlessly accommodates changing business needs and workloads.
Optimize Cost: Use your private infrastructure for most workloads — you’ve already paid for it. And utilize cloud services for temporary workloads — they’re often pay-as-you-go, and you can save a tidy sum by optimizing usage.
Maintain a Failsafe System: You can store essential data and applications in the cloud — having a fallback separate from your primary infrastructure helps you get back on your feet faster in case of disaster.

Limitations

Complexity: Managing a hybrid cloud environment requires expertise in cloud tech, integration and orchestration. Different APIs, data formats and infrastructure configurations can make it an uphill task.
Latency Issues: Moving data across the public cloud and private infrastructure can affect performance, disrupting downstream processes.
Vendor Lock-In: Like a patchwork quilt, a hybrid cloud setup has many pieces. Depending on multiple cloud service providers opens you up to restrictive vendor lock-ins. Securely migrating data between systems is a demanding task.

Lastly, data security in the cloud remains a challenge, according to 37% of IT companies, the above Cisco report says.

Deploying across platforms requires business and technical teams to collaborate closely, so determine internally if your organization is mature enough to adopt a hybrid cloud approach.

Unsure about which deployment model will fit? Call us to receive advice from the experts.

Expert recommendations and analysis on the top Business Intelligence Software

Primary Benefits

Business intelligence helps identify marketing trends by analyzing CRM and supply chain software data. It enables goal-setting, identifying inefficiencies and generating near-real-time reports.

Benefits of BI Tools

Enhance UX

Business intelligence assists in lead conversion and client retention by giving you customer data to analyze. The derived insight helps you personalize your marketing campaigns and rein in turnover.

It helps you push targeted promotions and tailored products and services to buyers.

Accurate sales forecasting, revenue projections and on-point customer segmentation help you allocate resources and plan better. Monitoring CRM performance metrics and tracking customer sentiment on social media keeps you competitive.

Manage Workforce

With BI tools, you can retain employees for longer by optimizing productivity, hiring smart and building effective schedules. Performance analysis, workforce planning, tracking absence/leave patterns and engagement data are key business intelligence insight that helps.

Other benefits of BI tools are performance reviews, employee goal setting, gathering team and management feedback, and managing competencies.

BI tools drive successful talent acquisition, succession planning and employee development. You can help your employees grow with your organization by creating career paths that align with their skill set and potential.

Streamline HR

As a human resource manager, you can improve employee engagement, mitigate legal risks and maintain compliance with labor laws with reporting.

You can ensure employees are paid fairly by analyzing employee demographics, compensation data, retention metrics and risk factors.

Control Supply Chain

Managing supply chains is no easy task with production planning and inventory management. Maintaining supplier relationships and executing transactions is possible with BI.

BI software drive savings with demand forecasting, inventory optimization, supplier performance evaluation and cost analysis.

Plan Ahead

Knowing where you’re headed and how to get there is business-critical. Some modern BI solutions come pre-packaged with predictive and prescriptive analytics, so check for those if you need business planning as part of the feature set.

And they’re intuitive, so anyone can build predictive data models using visuals and user-friendly interface actions.

Predictive analytics software lets you perform regression analysis where you decide the outcome and backtrack to determine what to do today to get that particular result in the future.

Prescriptive analytics uses statistical models and machine learning (ML) algorithms to make projections based on specific rules.

Many BI tools simplify your life by allowing simple English queries and providing automatic recommendations.

Expert recommendations and analysis on the top Business Intelligence Software

Implementation Goals

What do you want the new business intelligence software to achieve? Does your reporting process leave much to be desired? Do you need a better handle on business planning?

Listing your implementation goals is an excellent starting point.

BI Software Implementation Goals

Goal 1 Stay Competitive	You want to outperform your competitors. You wish to track performance KPIs. You want to be ready for opportunities and eventualities. Rather than react to market dynamics, you want to be the one creating those trends.
Goal 2 Improve Decision-Making	You want to monetize your information. You want to base decisions on hardcore numbers.
Goal 3 Utilize Existing Systems	The business intelligence solution should work with your existing infrastructure. Secure data movement and access should be possible across the integrated systems.
Goal 4 Discover Useful Insight	You should be able to explore and analyze metrics independently. You wish to view consolidated insight from several sources. Reports should be customizable and easy to understand across the board.
Goal 5 Get Accurate Reports	Information should be correct and up-to-date. Sharing insights should be straightforward. Team collaboration on dashboards and reports should be possible.

Expert recommendations and analysis on the top Business Intelligence Software

Basic Features & Functionality

Interactivity, real-time monitoring and self-service are crucial features in any data-driven software, and BI software are no exception.

Here are some other features to consider.

Data Management	The top business intelligence tools connect to files, relational databases, cloud sources, web services and data warehouses using connectors and APIs. Data quality management is a must-have for accurate and reliable information. Your business intelligence platform must cleanse inconsistent data using parsing and enrichment techniques.
Dashboarding and Data Visualization	Dashboards show your desired metrics on one interface, letting you filter them to get deeper insight. BI tools are all about real-time monitoring via data refreshes, manual or automated, to keep you updated with the latest insight. A rich visualization library serves your diverse data needs — every graphic type doesn’t suit every dataset. Pre-built report templates are life savers — who has the time to build from scratch?
Reporting	Despite all the noise about interactive, live reports, static reports matter still. A BI solution that provides traditional and modern reports can cater to all your reporting needs. Reports are for sharing — through email, instant messaging apps and team chats. You can save time with a BI tool that provides report scheduling.
Security	The best business intelligence solutions allow setting up role-based access and object-level security. Your BI tool must have backup and recovery protocols to safeguard your information. User management should include role-based authentication, activity logging and traceability.
Advanced Analytics	Business data is rarely two-dimensional — for instance, a product is associated with an ID, name, category or size, stock by store, year of launch and more. Analyzing these metrics requires multidimensional analysis. Ask vendors if their product has this capability. Advanced analytics enhances business intelligence with statistical functions and mathematical calculations. They add value to your business by uncovering new insight.
Embedded BI	Using business intelligence capabilities without switching to the application in another tab is embedded tech at work. Can your tool of choice do this? Embedding vendor-hosted BI software requires you to sign in to your solution instance, which is fine if your data is separate from other users. BI tools need to support multi-tenancy for it to happen.
Geospatial Visualizations and Analytics	Displaying area-based information in columns is excellent for tabular reports, but showing it in graphs and maps requires more. Presenting location details in visualizations requires integrating with Mapbox, Google Maps and Bing Maps.
Mobile BI	Determine internally if a mobile app is essential for your team to stay connected to data when out of the office. Mobile alerts and notifications are a great way for stakeholders, including senior management, to monitor KPIs remotely.

Expert recommendations and analysis on the top Business Intelligence Software

Advanced Features & Functionality

Consider acquiring advanced capabilities at the onset if your company has specific needs or plans to scale. These include IoT (Internet of Things), augmented analytics and more nuanced reporting features.

BI Software Advanced Features

Advanced Querying	The best business intelligence software query against databases directly, keeping results fresh and accurate. Then there’s streaming analytics — information from social media websites, app activity, clickstreams, equipment sensors and stock market quotes. Ask vendors if their BI tool connects to streaming data sources if you need it. Many BI tools save computing resources by updating metrics when you access them. A power-saving technology — incremental refreshes — loads only the information that changed instead of performing a complete upload. Asynchronous refresh is another optimization technique.
AI-ML	Artificial intelligence (AI) improves the quality and speed of information by letting you ask questions in simple English and pairing it with automated predictive insight. It lets you ask your BI tool, “What are my sales projections for the next six months?” Getting the same information from tabular reports would be a challenge. Machine learning is a subset of AI, guiding data analysis with automated recommendations. It learns from your actions to give you contextual results and suggestions.
Advanced Reporting	KPI monitoring is a task best delegated to software programs — you can’t always be online. A BI software that delivers reports to your inbox on data changes keeps you two steps ahead of market trends. Advanced capabilities include personalized insight via report bursting, keeping your business front and center. Report consumers receive only relevant reports. A management-level report will be a high-level overview, while a departmental report will be detailed. Power BI and Pyramid Analytics offer report bursting.
IoT Analytics	IoT (Internet of Things) data includes information from web-connected pipelines, weather stations, smart meters, delivery solutions, motion sensors and virtual assistants. Add IoT analytics to your requirements checklist if your business needs this insight.

Expert recommendations and analysis on the top Business Intelligence Software

Current & Upcoming Trends

Knowing what to expect helps us prepare better for what’s to come. Industry trends can reveal critical functionalities you might want to include in your ask list.

Business Intelligence Trends

Data Literacy

Self-service BI ranks consistently high on the Business Application Research Center’s annual business intelligence trends survey. AI is a significant driver of data literacy, making business intelligence software user-friendly and everyone a citizen data analyst.

User autonomy is a significant draw for enterprises as it helps reduce the time to insight. Independently accessing information boosts employee engagement, giving them a sense of shared ownership of projects.

User autonomy is high on enterprises’ ask list regarding new business intelligence software.

Read about explainable AI in our Future of Business Intelligence (BI).

Data Governance

Sourcing information from myriad complex sources can cause data security and quality issues, which makes complying with data privacy guidelines essential.

Enterprises increasingly seek software with data governance baked in. As a business intelligence software buyer, ensuring your platform offers this functionality is essential.

And with these regulations changing frequently, a vendor that keeps up to date with them is a cut above the rest.

With the risks artificial intelligence poses for data security, governance is a bear and will be the software industry’s focus for the foreseeable future.

Read about data privacy and security in the age of AI in our Future of Business Analytics Trends article.

Mobile Intelligence

Over 90% of global users surf the Internet on mobile devices for personal and professional purposes. On the industry front, Mordor Intelligence predicts the mobile BI market will grow at a CAGR of 22.43% over the forecast period 2021–2026.

Software vendors cannot ignore the market potential of making BI software available on mobile.

BI applications on remote devices and laptops are the primary means of work today, especially after changed work norms post-COVID-19.

Besides sales figures, these apps pull data from social media comments, posts and product mentions that indicate what people think about your product. Negative customer feedback, even random comments, can considerably harm your brand.

Additionally, eCommerce apps on mobile are significant customer touchpoints for browsing or purchasing your products online. Mobile insight forms a significant chunk of customer intelligence, with easy product accessibility for end users.

SaaS BI

In this survey, around 50% of the respondents stated that cloud BI is either important or very important to their organization, with 27.5% considering it business-critical.

Launching data warehouses and multidimensional data processing techniques like OLAP brought traditional BI under the scanner. Could it handle the additional processing demands?

Cloud computing, especially software-as-a-service, was the software with optimization techniques like server clustering and parallel processing. Plus, SaaS became available on mobile, making work from home a reality.

Flexible subscriptions freed up enterprises — no maintenance and infrastructure overheads — to test-run business intelligence software without burning a hole in their pocket.

SaaS business intelligence is an industry disruptor, and it seems set for interesting innovations going ahead.

Check out our article on Business Intelligence Trends for an in-depth look at where the industry is headed.

Cost & Pricing Considerations

Who will use the business intelligence software, and will they need training? Where does your existing system fall short? Keeping your business needs and limitations in mind can help narrow your search.

Factor in the initial cost of the software, ongoing maintenance and support costs and the investment required for the hardware. Compare it against the value it’ll provide. Does it align with your business goals?

Take the time to understand the various pricing models. It can make or break your buying decision even when the product ticks all your checkboxes.

Subscription-based software is available for a recurring monthly or annual fee. It’s vendor-hosted and maintained.
Usage-based pricing involves paying for the resources you use. It’s pretty handy if you have fluctuating workloads. Core-based pricing is one variant.
Perpetual licensing is when you pay a one-time cost of owning the software.
Value-based pricing can work for you if you’re on a tight budget. Product cost depends on the value the BI software provides to your business.

Costs can vary depending on

Pricing model
Data migration needs
Features and functionality
Maintenance and support requirements
Customizations
User seats
Add-ons

Research potential vendors — check online reviews, read industry guides and ask colleagues for recommendations.

Always ask if a free trial or version is available and what it entails.

Learn the difference between free and freemium software — both kinds are meant as an introduction to the vendor’s flagship software to entice you to buy the paid version. Which one will fit your needs?

Our article on Lean Selection methodology breaks down the software search process for you.

Price Guide for BI Tools

See prices for the top Business Intelligence Tools... Plus get important questions to ask.

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Questions To Ask Yourself

Ask yourself these questions as a starting point in the context of your organization and its needs.

What are our pain points, and how do we expect the new software to address them?
How much customization will we need?
Will we require in-house technical resources? Or will we need to rely on the vendor for deployment?
Which systems should integrate with the new platform?
Which are the critical dependencies impacting deployment?

Questions to Ask About BI Tools

Questions To Ask Vendors

Vendor discussions are excellent for addressing queries and concerns. We suggest some questions to add to your list.

About the Software

What are your product’s core strengths?
Can we customize the software as desired?
Does it support interactivity and user autonomy?
Which security features are available?
Are there any volume-based limitations on data processing?

About the Vendor

How long have you been in this industry?
What support or training do you provide?
What differentiates your services from other vendors?
How long does deployment take? Do you offer assistance?
Is documentation available?

Expert recommendations and analysis on the top Business Intelligence Software

Next Steps

The top BI tools boost revenue and improve business performance by harnessing proprietary data. Moreover, you get the added benefit of business planning with predictive analytics.

This buyer’s guide is a primer to guide procurement professionals responsible for selecting a BI solution for their organization.

Once you have the vendor shortlist, reach out to them with questions and a request for proposal (RFP). Ask about free trials or demos as proof of concept of the product.

Research them thoroughly before starting further discussions. Decide after careful consideration and go ahead with the purchase.

Are you still feeling overwhelmed in your business intelligence software search? Get started with our free comparison report to learn more about the market leaders.

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Additional Resources

About The Contributors

The following expert team members are responsible for creating, reviewing, and fact checking the accuracy of this content.

By Ritinder Kaur

Technical Content Writer

Ritinder Kaur is a Senior Technical Content Writer at SelectHub and has eight years of experience writing about B2B software and quality assurance. She has a Masters degree in English language and literature and writes about Business Intelligence and Data Science. Her articles on software testing have been published on Stickyminds.

Technical Research By Sagardeep Roy

Senior Analyst

Sagardeep is a Senior Research Analyst at SelectHub, specializing in diverse technical categories. His expertise spans Business Intelligence, Analytics, Big Data, ETL, Cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and machine learning, with additional proficiency in EHR and Medical Billing. Holding a Master of Technology in Data Science from Amity University, Noida, and a Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science from West Bengal University of Technology, his experience across technology, healthcare, and market research extends back to 2016. As a certified Data Science and Business Analytics professional, he approaches complex projects with a results-oriented mindset, prioritizing individual excellence and collaborative success.

Technical Review By Manan Roy

Principal Analyst

Manan is a native of Tezpur, Assam (India), who currently lives in Kolkata, West Bengal (India). At SelectHub, he works on categories like CRM, HR, PPM, BI, and EHR. He has a Bachelor of Technology in CSE from The Gandhi Institute of Engineering and Technology, a Master of Technology from The Institute of Engineering and Management IT, and an MBA in Finance from St. Xavier's College. He's published two research papers, one in a conference and the other in a journal, during his Master of Technology.

Edited By Hunter Lowe

Content Editor

Hunter Lowe is a Content Editor, Writer and Market Analyst at SelectHub. His team covers categories that range from ERP and business intelligence to transportation and supply chain management. Hunter is an avid reader and Dungeons and Dragons addict who studied English and Creative Writing through college. In his free time, you'll likely find him devising new dungeons for his players to explore, checking out the latest video games, writing his next horror story or running around with his daughter.